About this item
In 2002, the town of Galesburg, a slowly declining Rustbelt city of 33,000 in western Illinois, learned that it would soon lose its largest factory, a Maytag refrigerator plant that had anchored Galesburg's social and economic life for decades. Workers at the plant earned $15.14 an hour, had good insurance, and were assured a solid retirement. In 2004, the plant was relocated to Reynosa, Mexico, where workers sometimes spent 13-hour days assembling refrigerators for $1.10 an hour. In Boom, Bust, Exodus, Chad Broughton offers a ground-level look at the rapid transition to a globalized economy, from the perspective of those whose lives it has most deeply affected. We live in a commoditized world, increasingly divorced from the origins of the goods we consume; it is easy to ignore who is manufacturing our smart phones and hybrid cars; and where they come from no longer seems to matter.
About the Author
CHAD BROUGHTON was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and spent much of his youth in Batesville, a small town in southeastern Indiana. His first book, Boom, Bust, Exodus: The Rust Belt, the Maquilas, and a Tales of Two Cities, is based on several years of fieldwork in the U.S. and Mexico and is told through interwoven stories of people, places, and policies. Broughton is a senior lecturer in Public Policy Studies in the College and the Harris School at the University of Chicago. He lives in Evanston, Illinois, with his wife and three daughters.
